Marking is a radiologist. When Marking is not marking time day-dreaming about his next day off, he uses imaging technology, like x-ray and radiation, to evaluate the likelihood of disease.

Marking grinned like a giddy mollusk when I laid out Nassim Taleb's Round-Trip fallacy like this

You can tell your patient there is No Evidence of Disease (NED), but cannot tell him that there is Evidence of No Disease (END)

Sadly, END is probably how the patient prefers to hear the diagnosis, but NED is what the report says.

Marking intimates that his profession is a crock of clam juice because the reports radiologists produce, after examining a chest film that falls within a normal range, have marginal clinical value. Many of his colleagues will order an ongoing series of baseless tests to confirm what they know for fear of litigation (e.g., Taleb calls this the Confirmation Fallacy) .

Marking's colleagues remind me of software professionals like us who make Zero Defect Pledges, or who shoot for 100% Code Coverage. We mindlessly pad our tests with meaningless test assertion after meaningless test assertion to confirm the obvious.